The experience was deeply rewarding—not in spite of the difficulty, but because of it.

I'm grateful to TEDxMidAtlantic for the opportunity and grateful to myself for continuing to challenge my own comfort.

Do hard things!

#TEDx #DoHardThings

But that simplification is also the mechanism for the platform's power. It forces you to distill your core idea.

It’s what makes complex topics accessible to a global audience and provides a stage for new perspectives.

For researchers, TED talks are a specific kind of hard. We're trained to embrace nuance and complexity.

Here, you're forced to cut, simplify, and present over-rehearsed content. That process can feel inauthentic.

In a recent video Casey Neistat distinguishes between mandatory hardships and chosen hardships.

This talk was a chosen hardship. The key about a chosen challenge is you can quit at any time, which forces you to confront why you're doing it.

Yesterday, this philosophy was tested when I stepped onto the red dot at #TEDxMidAtlantic.

It was terrifying—bright lights, a theatre full of dark silhouettes. I’ve never practiced a talk this much, or worked with a coach to train for one.

I did it. I froze once but recovered.

Some say now is not the time to bring up climate. I argue it's exactly the time.

A defense strategy that ignores the operational environment is not a strategy at all.

#ClimateSecurity

This isn't a problem for 2040. It's happening today. Melting permafrost is destabilizing military radar stations in the Arctic. Changing ocean salinity and temperature impact our ability to detect submarines. Our military infrastructure is vulnerable now.